With regard to the artistic construction of the book, the method is the same as that of most of Dostoievsky’s books. In nearly all his works the book begins just before a catastrophe and occupies the space of a few days. And yet the book is very long. It is entirely taken up by conversation and explanation of the conversation. There are no descriptions of nature; everything is in a dialogue. Directly one character speaks we hear the tone of his voice. There are no “stage directions.” We are not told that so and so is such and such a person, we feel it and recognise it from the very first word he says. On the other hand, there is a great deal of analysis, but it is never of an unnecessary kind. Dostoievsky never nudges our elbow, never points out to us things which we know already, but he illuminates with a strong searchlight the deeps of the sombre and tortuous souls of his characters, by showing us what they are themselves thinking, but not what he thinks of them. His analysis resembles the Greek chorus, and his books resemble Greek tragedies in the making, rich ore mingled with dark dross, granite and marble, the stuff out of which Æschylus could have hewn another _Agamemnon_, or Shakespeare have written another _King Lear_. _The Idiot_ may not be the most artistic of all his books, in the sense that it is not centralised and is often diffuse, which is not the case with _Crime and Punishment_, but it is perhaps the most characteristic, the most personal, for none but Dostoievsky could have invented and caused to live such a character as Prince Mwishkin, and made him positively radiate goodness and love. VII _THE POSSESSED_ _The Possessed_, or _Devils_, which is the literal translation of the Russian title, is perhaps inferior to Dostoievsky’s other work as a whole, but in one sense it is the most interesting book which he ever wrote. There are two reasons for this: in the first place, his qualities and his defects as a writer are seen in this book intensified, under a magnifying glass as it were, at their extremes, so that it both gives you an idea of the furthest range of his powers, and shows you most clearly the limitations of his genius. Stevenson points out somewhere that this is the case with Victor Hugo’s least successful novels. In the second place, the book was far in advance of its time. In it Dostoievsky shows that he possessed “a prophetic soul.” The book deals with the Nihilists who played a prominent part in the sixties. The explanation of the title is to be found in a quotation from the 8th chapter of St. Luke’s Gospel.